Session 19

Implementation of digital & social media strategies

After agreeing a marketing strategy the next step is to put it into practice!

Considerations:

Respond to positive and negative comments.
Protect company reputation.
optimise click through, conversions and website traffic.

Definition: Real-Time Data – Information that is delivered immediately after it’s collected.

Google Analytics reports have a 24hr delay for processing, whereas the real-time overview displays a live data stream. Including:

User Location
New/Returning Users
Traffic Sources and keywords
Pages views in the last 30 mins
Events such as submitting a form, or converting e-commerce goals in the last 30 mins

(You can also use RT to check a campaign tag is triggering as it should)

Challenges of real-time

Websites and apps are accessible from mobile devices anywhere at anytime. Social media thrives on immediacy. Many challenges for digital marketers:

Social can be impulsive, ephemeral and difficult to anticipate.
Live situations can get out of hand before you even hear about them.
Interests trend and fade. Communities of interest may emerge around an event then persist or disperse.
Communities can have strong views and even co-opt your brand.
Interest on socials is weaker than search. Paid social might not deliver ROI.
Integration of online and offline has to be carefully planned.

Responding to customer queries

Responding to questions and customer service enquiries is a low cost activity that consumers appreciate. Can be seen as the low hanging fruit

Pledging to fix a customers genuine complaint goes a long way to resolve the situation. Comedy can help if the complaint is unreasonable.

Social Listening

What are people saying about my brand? not just customers.
Social listening is an early indicator if something might be going wrong.
Don’t censor: It’s not possible anyway! Counteract negative with positive C2C and influencer reviews and user-generated content.
Aim is always to ensure the company is meeting the expectations of customers and other stakeholders, Not to interact for it’s own sake.
Digital Etiquette is essential, tailored to the channel.
Don’t forget to monitor mentions of your product categories & competitors.

Reputation

Reputation takes time to build and can be lost in an instant! It’s all about meeting the expectation of stakeholders.

Rapid response is key:

A tweet, image, video etc can be instantly copied, shared or even re-posted on multiple channels, Impossible to delete!
A negative story about a brand can be at the top of SERPs for years afterwards.
The impact on a company’s share price is visible in real time
Nonetheless, even viral stories fade as people move onto the next thing.

Reputation management tools

Don’t neglect customer service as not directly revenue-driving.

Google Alerts, Brand24, Hootsuite.

Social Mention – Aggregates search results of >80 socials in real time. API to pipe date into other monitoring dashboards.

Strength: Mentions in last 24 hours/ total possible mentions

Sentiment: Positive mentions/ negative mentions

Reach (Influence): Number of mentions from unique authors/ total number of mentions.

Passion: Inverse of reach. Measure of repeat mentions by the same people (Enthusiasts)

Explain the role of blogs and articles in increasing website traffic

Tactics to drive web traffic/SEO:

New content
Web indexing
Linking opportunities
keywords

Blogs and Articles

Marketing oriented content:

A call to action – Acquisition/ Conversion
A value Proposition – Reach/ Acquisition
Relationship Marketing – Retention
Targeted up-sell and cross-sell – Retention
Paid-for or unpaid reviews/influence – Reach
Build communities of interest – Acquisition

*CUSTOMER LIFECYCLE REMINDER*

Reach – Aware
Acquisition – Goes to site
Conversion – Action
Retention – Returner
Loyalty – Advocacy

Questions to ask when writing a blog…

Who is the target market? (Always start here!)
How frequently should I publish/post?
What time of day?
Long/short, formal/informal, text/audio/video?
Should we moderate comments/ have no comments?
What’s the message? Is there a call to action? What are the KPIs?
Should I pay to reach an audience? How much?
Do we need a microsite?

Social Media engagement goals

Use branded hashtag
Click a link
Favourite your page
Follow you
Link back to you
Reply to your post
Retweet

Boosting web traffic tactics

Web Indexing:
– Submitting your web pages to Googlebot and other search engine crawlers.
– Using meta tags, ‘follow’ instructions to robots, site map.
– Monitoring SEO using screaming frog, Search console etc.
Linking
– Backlinks for link authority and diversity.
– See majestic SEO site explorer to view your ‘Trust Flow’.
Keywords
– Optimise hashtags.
– Generate keywords that can be used across socials.

Don’t forget about ‘dark social’

A large percentage of GA referrals may be allocated to ‘Direct’
This means Google doesn’t know where it came from.
The user may have typed the URL directly, used a bookmark, or clicked on a shared link in email or chat.

Click-through rate

Definition: Number of users who clicked on a link as a percentage of all users who viewed the page

An important indicator of campaign performance.
See all social media referrals in google analytics – look for changes with new content.
use social tools to track retweets, follows, likes, shares, re-grams.

CTR is not always directly related to campaign success. Combine with bounce-backs and check suitability of landing pages.

Expand CTR to engagement

How would you monitor engagement in GA?
Page views, duration, destination.
Events/goals e.g. watch a video, refer to a friend.
‘Active users’ report. Rolling figure over 7-days, 14-days… measure of ‘stickiness’